The thesis sets out to study regulatory innovation inside government from the
perspective of user innovation and to do so in a way that is critically performative.
The empirical subject matter is ‘laboratories’ (Da. Styringslaboratorier): a form of
innovation process focused on developing ‘regulatory innovations’ (i.e.
administrative innovations used for purposes of regulating public sector
organizations) in collaboration between regulators and users. This particular form
of innovation process has been the subject of considerable debate in Denmark and
been suggested as a way forward in public sector modernization after New Public
Management. It is, however, also an underspecified phenomenon: while it is
attributed some potential, it is unclear what this potential is and what it is about
laboratories that make this potential plausible. We have only vague ideas about
what gets done when people do laboratories.